The Indian Railways is the most after accounts in the telecom industry. The transporter has been using services of Bharati Airtel Ltd for the last six years to provide mobile phone connections to its employees in a closed user group across the country for which the railways paid around Rs 100 crore bill a year, a PTI report said. The validity of the contract will expire on 31 December this year.

Starting 1 January 2019, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd will be taking over Bharati Airtel as the telecom service provider for the Indian Railways. According to a PTI report, this could reduce the transporter's bill by at least 35 percent.

The order issued by the Railway Board on 20 November said, had assigned the responsibility to RailTel (railway public sector unit) for finalisation of fresh CUG scheme for Indian Railways as the validity of the existing scheme is expiring on Dec. 31, 2018." It also had detailed tariff rates to be provided by the telecom company.

"Fresh CUG scheme had since been finalised by RailTel and Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited has been awarded the contract to implement the scheme," it further said. A CUG is a supplementary service provided by the mobile operators to subscribers who can make and receive calls from any member associated within the group, including SMS.